Salisbury Museum is delighted to announce that we have appointed Bath based contractors H Mealing and Sons Limited to undertake the base-build and conservation works to the King’s House. This work is the start our £5 million major redevelopment – Past Forward – funded with nearly £4 million from the National Lottery Heritage Fund. This project will see the creation of exciting new galleries dedicated to Salisbury history, ceramics, natural history and improved public facilities.
This work means that from the 11-12 March 2023 the café will be closed along with the fashion, Salisbury history and ceramics galleries. In the weeks leading up to this we will be packing up all of these areas with teams of trained volunteers. During this period some areas of the museum will no longer have objects on display – even though they will remain open to the public. Behind the scenes stores will also be emptied to make way for the building works.
Once the building works start some areas of the museum will remain open. This includes the Wessex Gallery of archaeology, shop and the temporary exhibition gallery. Major events such as our Spring Fayre on 1 May and our annual Festival of Archaeology in July are still scheduled to take place on site.
Building works are likely to continue until the first part of 2024 as following on from the base build work the museum needs specialist contractors to fit out the new exhibition spaces. We will then be filling the galleries with new objects and exhibits. The relaunched museum will open in the late spring of 2024.
You can read more about Past Forward here
